The Overwhelming Question that hangs heavy over every thoughtful teacher as he nears the end of his career is “Have I made a difference?”
And then the tense changes and the question becomes “Did I make a difference?” The answer to this one is forever fixed on the face of time.
So says the head of an article in the January 6 Idaho Statesman. I deplore much of what is said about us in the media, but to my surprise I found myself agreeing with most points in this article and applauding some. Most of it makes good sense. It made me feel good because my district has made much progress in this direction. Most (but not all) of the recommendations resulting from the study cited here have been implemented and are operative insofar as resources allow. I would like to work my way through the article commenting on it pretty much sentence by sentence: responsive reading notes, as it were.
SEATTLE — Once-a-year evaluations aren’t enough to help teachers improve, says a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
I agree heartily with the central assertion of the report being referred to here, in general principal, with the sole reservation that the devil is in the details of how more frequent observation would be conducted and how it would be used. The article goes on to give at least some details, which I will assume accurately reflect the main points of the report. I am pleasantly surprised that this study was conducted under the auspices of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I am suspicious of the agendas of Billionaires Bearing Gifts.
… School districts using infrequent classroom observations to decide who are their best – and their worst – teachers could be making some big mistakes, according to the second part of a multi-year study from the foundation.
This journalist, like most of his ilk, talks about how infrequent observations can be a mistake for the district, but what about the teachers? No one really likes to be observed. It is an interruption and a distraction. Nevertheless, the experienced teacher comes to realize that more frequent observations, well and reasonably done, fairly and constructively employed, can be his friend. Of course more frequent observation will document poor teachers, and a history of poor performance can be just cause for non-renewing even a continuing-contract teacher, but can also document that teachers are doing their jobs. A union is not acting in the best interest of its members if it knee-jerk opposes any and all evaluation.
Good teacher evaluations require multiple nuanced observations by trained evaluators. Those results should be combined with other measures, such as student test scores and classroom surveys, to gather enough information to both evaluate teachers and help them improve, the researchers found after nationwide experiments involving thousands of teachers.
Operative terms here are “nuanced [italics mine] observations.” Much Reformist rhetoric suggests a blunt instrument approach, one size fits all. Would that teaching and what goes on in a classroom were so simple. Teaching is a complex pursuit, although many people who have never done it do not believe so. Every day is different. Every combination of kids in a room is different. The content of every lesson makes its own demands. Another operative term is trained evaluators. Evaluation is at once a science, an art, and a craft. Good performance and bad alike are complex sets of behaviors, effective, more-or-less effective, and obviously negative. An evaluator must know what he is looking for and what he is looking at. Tests are one part of a larger whole, and not the most important part, I think. If this report is indeed research based rather than ideology based, it is miles ahead of most Reformist fare.
The most common teacher evaluation method used by school districts today – a single classroom observation once every few years – has only a 33 percent chance of resulting in an accurate assessment of a teacher, the researchers found.
The single classroom observation a year is inadequate, and it never has been adequate, although until fairly recently, it was the norm. It probably still is standard practice in many districts. It just never occurred that there might be something better. In this one indirect way at least, Reformism may have had a positive, if unintended, benefit. At best, single observation allows the administrator to see only one of approximately 900 high school classroom hours in an academic year. If this were a really representative sample, it might be adequate. But it is not an adequate sample. If the observation is at an appointed time, a teacher will prepare something especially for that time so that he can really strut his stuff. It may be his best, but it won’t be truly representative. If, on the other hand, the observation is at a random time and unannounced, it may catch the teacher on his worst day in his class from hell (which we all have from time to time) and be no more representative than the advance-scheduled observation. The answer is more observations. The more items in a sample, the more likely it will be that variability among the samples will average each other out.
This confirms what many teachers and their unions have been saying for years: “That when high stakes decisions are being made, school districts should allow for more than one observation,” said Tom Kane, deputy director of the Seattle-based foundation’s education program and leader of the research project.
As I said above, a personnel folder full of good evaluations (and actually, observations are properly only a part of the evaluation process) is your best friend at contract renewal time. It is hard to fire even a new teacher, not yet on continuing contract, who has numerous consistently good reviews. But based on only one observation per year, you are only as good as that last one.
Teachers across the nation are getting too little feedback and are being left alone to figure out what they need to do to improve, says Vicki Phillips, director of the foundation’s education program. If the nation is serious about improving the quality of its teachers, improving evaluation and feedback should be an important element of that effort.
This, not getting the goods on teachers in order to fire them, is the greatest value of frequent observations. Once upon a time, in another school district, there was a rookie foreign language teacher who experienced considerable difficulty his first two years. His linguistic competence was never an issue. He made a hobby of learning languages, often obscure ones. Kyrgyz? If he could obtain an English-Kyrgyz dictionary and some Kyrgyz newspapers, he could teach himself the language. He did not necessarily need a Kyrgyz grammar; he could construct his own. Languages were not just his classroom subject, but his passion and his genius. Alas, when it came to classroom management, he was pretty clueless, and the kids led him a merry chase. His frustration grew. By the end of his second year, it came to a head.
One spring evening I was grading essays late in the faculty lounge. V. and our principal, G, came in, engaged in an earnest conversation, sat down, and continued to discuss. It was none of my business, so I went into fly-on-the-wall mode, kept my eyes on my papers, my mouth shut and my ears open. V. had returned his contract for the following year unsigned. He was not planning to come back the following year. This was the first G. had heard of it. He was understandably concerned; he was losing a one-man foreign language department. As they talked, V. explained the reasons for leaving, cataloguing his difficulties (no, he did not have a better offer elsewhere). For each, G. offered sound advice. Finally, V. banged both fists upon the table and shouted (he was a very soft-spoken man), “Dammit, G! Why weren’t you telling me this stuff two years ago when it could have done me some good? Sorry. My mind is made up.” He had given up on teaching. We lost a talented, perhaps positively brilliant young teacher of great promise.
For the past two years, the foundation has been working to build a fair and reliable system of teacher evaluation and feedback to help teachers improve their craft and assist school administrators in their personnel decisions.
This one sentence contains several important terms. “Fair and reliable:” it must be those. Teachers are always worried about the fairness of their evaluations, the more so in this age of hostile Reformist rhetoric, according to which superb teachers should get preferential treatment (bonuses), and not-so-superb teachers should get the sack. Administrators’ “personnel decisions” are becoming high-stakes as never before. Skepticism is warranted. But the most important benefit of a well-designed, well-administered evaluation process is that it will provide “feedback to help teachers improve their craft.” G. was a principal of many virtues, but this was not among them.
This report comes amid efforts across the country to change the way teachers are evaluated. Most of the new systems are a direct result of a call by the federal government for education reform, and many are finding implementation of the evaluation systems difficult.
The core of the Gates Foundation study was a collection of digital videos of more than 13,000 lessons in classrooms of teachers who volunteered to be studied.
The classrooms are being studied in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla., Memphis City Schools, The New York City Department of Education and Pittsburgh Public Schools.
It is too bad that school districts are getting interested in evaluation only in response to outside pressure from the federal or state level. Of course, evaluating teachers is difficult. But if the result is to be worthwhile, it is worth working through. There is no fast way. Of course, a team tasked with coming up with an evaluation system should be aware of what is being done/has been done elsewhere. They should also be aware of what has been done in the past in their own district. The more the better – ideas are where you find them. But a system copied from what worked somewhere else will not necessarily work very well here. One size does not fit all. A canned system, handed down by the legislature or the state department of education, or even the local administration, will not be worth much. There are no short cuts.
The main conclusions of this report are as follows [Let’s consider them one at a time]:
– High quality classroom observations require clear, specific standards, well trained and certified evaluators and multiple observations per teacher.
There are three operative terms here. First is the need for clear, specific standards. Defining them will require much thought, much discussion, and finally, clear, cogent writing. By next year or the year after, the process will be no better than the language with which it is written. Second is “well trained and certified evaluators” who know what they are looking for and what they are looking at. Being an administrator does not necessarily mean competent evaluations. Third, multiple observations per teacher: It is easier to get rid of a bad teacher if his incompetence has been well documented. Likewise, it is harder to remove a good teacher if his adequate or better classroom performance has been documented on numerous occasions.
– Classroom evaluation is not enough. That information should be combined with student feedback and data on improvement in student test scores. Combining the three kinds of evaluations offsets the weaknesses of each individual approach.
That “Classroom evaluation is not enough” is obvious. I have no quarrel. But I am leery of the next two. How will student feedback be obtained, processed, and weighted. Unimportant, the Reformists would say. Mere administrative details, of no concern to any teacher, they would say. No, these “details” are of deadly importance. If this is not done thoughtfully and carefully, it could turn into a high-stakes popularity contest. What would happen to a teacher’s authority if students could say, “Yo, teach! If you not nice to us, we vote against you, turn our thumbs down, and get your sorry ass fired! We vote you off the island?” And if a teacher’s authority is thus undermined, will he be able to effectively manage his classroom? Why should students then accept instruction from him as worth anything? What impact would there be on instructional effectiveness? “Piffle,” the Reformists would sneer. This is mere catastrophizing. It is a worst case scenario and therefore irrelevant.” All too often, as in this case, the worst case is the defining case, the only relevant one. Here there be dragons.
Furthermore, according to another article at Idaho Statesman.com, henceforth parental input is also a component of teacher evaluations, mandated by the state Department of Education, based on legislation to be introduced in the 2010 legislature. How will this data be gathered, and how will it be factored in? Years ago, an “effectiveness audit” was instrumental in removing a principal. How was parental input gathered? From a questionnaire distributed to those parents who had been invited to attend a parent organization meeting. Here there be dragons. At one of these meetings, a parent is alleged to have said to that principal, “Lady, you better watch your step because now you are taking your orders from me.” Urban legend or not, it is chilling.
How much weight should test scores carry in evaluating teachers? According to the same article at Statesman.com, the state Department of Education cites language passed by last year’s legislature as mandating that “at least 50 percent of all teaching evaluations performed after June 30 will be tied to the academic performance of students.” That’s how much. It is nice to see test scores as scientifically objective and mathematically precise, and therefore above question. This kind of illusory reverence for test scores denies the importance, indeed the existence, of all kinds of game-changing, game-defining external variables. Reformists deny the relevance of such factors as student demographics, student achievement to date, etc. Yet these things can matter. They are not an excuse not to work with and do all possible for students less advantaged economically and educationally, but they matter. In 2010, a “bad” teacher in Los Angeles jumped off a bridge shortly after he had been pilloried by name in the Los Angeles Times because of his students’ lackluster test scores. Coincidence? A post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy? I doubt it. The part of the story that didn’t come out until later was that the administration deliberately loaded his classes with underachieving students, at his request, because he could work with them and no one else wanted them. Yes, he added value; no, his kids were still not up to snuff. Did test scores tell the whole story? No good deed goes unpunished.
A component not mentioned here, a set of evaluation criteria that I consider to be of great importance, but which is obviously beneath the notice of Reformists in general and beyond the ken of Politicians in particular, is Teacher Practice. What is good practice? How do we define it so that we know it when see it, and so that we see it in the first place? Conversely, what are bad practices, likely to be counter-productive? Answers to these questions will require much study, thought and discussion. The criteria and instruments based on them that are unilaterally handed down do not work well.
Reformists say that the bottom line is the test scores – the magic numbers. They assume that students who test well do so because they have had good teachers. But what do good teachers actually do that makes them good. If we pay attention only to the ultimate effect (test scores), we must pay attention to cause (teacher practices). We cannot have effect without cause. We evaluate teacher practice by direct observation (the more frequent and the better the evaluation rubric, the better) which is a labor-intensive and time-consuming, and therefore, more expensive enterprise. Evaluation primarily by test scores is easy and cheap, and let’s face it, numbers, like test scores, have political punch, but it exemplifies the “street light effect” at is damndest.
– The different evaluation methods still need to be refined, but they’re better than what most districts are using now.
Evaluation methods always need to be refined, even if they are better than what most districts use. It is always a work in progress. The operative word is refined. If the old system has any practices worth keeping, they should be kept and built on. Think twice about tearing down the old system, even if it leaves much to be desired. A common fallacy of Reformists is to think that they are inventing the wheel. They want the one big fix that solves all problems (and makes them look good). Schools don’t work that way, and life doesn’t work that way. What is wanted is continuous improvement because it works and it lasts.
Memphis Public Schools used to evaluate its teachers once every five years. With financial help from the Gates Foundation, the district has switched to a system of four-to-six classroom visits by both principal and peer evaluators, followed by feedback meetings focused on improvement.
One observation every five years is absurdly inadequate, for experienced teachers as well as for rookies. It smacks to me of administrative malpractice. In my district, Nampa Idaho, 131, experienced teachers receive one formal (summative) observation a year. These are scheduled, so the teacher has advance notice. This gave me opportunity to write up and print my plan for the day, explaining what I would be doing that day, the rationale for it in terms of curriculum goals, what the evaluator could expect to see, and what I would like the evaluator to look for in particular. I found this to be a useful exercise in its own right. There were usually pre-observation and post-observation conferences. In addition, there were several “fast-track” observations that were unannounced and did not usually last the whole period. In a previous and much smaller school, the principal often delivered his own messages instead of sending a student aide. This had him in and out of many classrooms, however briefly, and gave him numerous “snapshots” of what was actually going on in his building. We thought then that it was poor use of administrative time. I think differently now.
The new system was implemented after to set new district-wide standards and both teachers and principals were thoroughly trained in the new system.
“This process is neither quick nor easy. And we’re still working out the kinks,” said Tequilla Banks, coordinator of research, evaluation and assessment for the Memphis district…. She said, however, that both teachers and administrators feel the effort is worth it.
When you are done, you are not done. It will always be a work in progress. Things change. New ideas are thought of. It must be revisited regularly. Notice especially that “teachers and administrators worked together.” This is vital. Teachers must participate in the process if they are to own it. They must own it if they are to accept it. And, they must accept it if they are to benefit from it.
The president of the teacher’s union in Hillsborough County Schools, which is using both teacher and principal evaluators, said teachers have embraced the new system.
The union should play a key role in the evaluation process. The scope of teacher evaluation, its methods, and its rules should be negotiated into the master contract. The make-up and the membership of the committee that draws up the actual instrument(s) must be approved at the negotiating table by both district and union representatives. Ideally, the committee(s) should reflect a balance between union and district personnel. The union must not merely react to board or outside pressure, but must take the initiative.
“We’re new in this process, but already many teachers tell us they value the conversations they’re having with their peers,” said Jean Clements.
These conversations are valuable in their own right, in that they will encourage serious thought about what constitutes good teaching and good performance in the total context of the school. These conversations should not occur just in the drafting committee, but in curriculum committees, faculty councils, departments, clear down to Friday afternoon social gatherings at favored watering spots. And those conversations should reach clear up to negotiating table. This kind of “metacognition” will ultimately have more effect on actual teaching practice and teacher growth than any evaluation process itself. This should be what Reformists want.
Both Hillsborough and Memphis are also experimenting with student surveys.
Those surveys, also being piloted by the foundation in school districts around the nation, are not popularity contests, Kane said. They focus on class experiences and ask students to talk about things like whether they are being challenged and engaged.
College professors have been evaluated by their students for years. Kane, who is also a Harvard professor, said he thinks school teachers could learn to appreciate that feedback as well.
“One thing I’ve learned is once you show people the questions, much of the hesitance fades away,” he said.
Feedback is good. Popularity contests are not.
Kane emphasized that the main finding of this research is that the more information gathered about any one teacher, the better chance she or he will be given an accurate evaluation that helps improve teaching practice.
This is the idea in a nutshell: to improve teacher practice. Any evaluation system that does not do this – and not all of them do – is of little value, and may be counter-productive. How do we evaluate the evaluation system? We determine whether it actually does this.
Districts that don’t have the money to completely change their evaluation systems can take some first steps that the foundation and the school districts thought would make a meaningful difference. Those ideas include:
– Better training and certification for observers, including videotaping lessons and having more than one person evaluate a teacher.
– Student surveys to supplement other methods of evaluation or as a way to help teachers and their mentors work together.
– Convene meetings between teachers and administrators to start collaborating on improving the evaluation system.
– Look at the foundation’s research results and start a conversation about which parts of a teacher’s practice are most closely linked to student success. Focus professional development on those areas.
The last two are the cheapest, in fact will likely cost next to nothing, and will produce the most long-term benefit. Once again, focus on teacher’s practice and start serious conversations about it. A number of years ago, there was a period of a few years that several of us, mostly from the Language Arts department, stopped at a nearby tavern after school on Friday afternoons. What did we talk about? We talked shop! We talked about what we did that did or did not work. We talked about curriculum and brainstormed ideas, many of which eventually got written up and sent on to Secondary Curriculum Committee. I learned more about teaching in these few hours every week than in many formal education courses. These sessions were more productive than many formal meetings. In fact, our curriculum meetings were all the more productive because we had already discussed many new ideas and brought them to the formal meeting.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federal of Teachers, expressed concern that too much emphasis is being placed on evaluating teachers and not on improving their performance.
“Until we make a commitment to develop evaluation systems that are first and foremost about continuous improvement and professional growth, we will continue to struggle in our efforts to provide every child with a high-quality education,” she said in a written statement.
The boldface italics are mine. Nuff said.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/01/10/1947084/apnewsbreak-id-to-adopt-new-school.html
I seem to be having a grammar problem. Or perhaps it is an identity problem. I keep lapsing into first person plural as if I were part of the NHS Language Arts department, as I was for some 28 years. It always comes out “we,” as if I were still part of it. And I find myself writing in present tense, although I have been retired for nearly five years.
My former colleagues at NHS, as well as those who have come on board since I left, are probably thinking “What do you mean we, white man?”
And why is this? I guess I don’t think of myself as a retired teacher, but as Teacher, Retired. I think there is a difference.
A colleague at another school (there I go in the present tense again) recently sent me this link:
By the time I retired, “brain science” had become the big thing. Every one, visiting mavens and administrators alike do obeisance to “brain science,” although the latter, especially, seemed not to actually know a great deal about it beyond broad generalizations. But we certainly heard a lot about it.
One of the pioneers of educational psychology in the early 20th Century who has always made the most sense to me is good old Jean Piaget. And by so saying, I probably show my age. I don’t recall any mention of him in my undergraduate educational psychology in the early 60s (perhaps I wasn’t paying attention; the course I took was scarcely riveting). In my graduate work in the 70s, he was much more in vogue, but it was a colleague who got me to seriously reading him and about him.
But nowadays, he seems to have fallen into disrepute. First, behavioral psychology was all the rage, and more recently brain science has rendered him “obsolete.” After all, he didn’t carry out formal experiments in a laboratory but in the “field,” usually a room where outside distractions could be controlled, closely observing children’s, play with as little overt interference as possible, while he took copious and meticulous notes. The behaviorists and neurologists would say that ain’t real science His methods were not experimental, but merely observational, they would say, although he did indeed conduct “experiments” by manipulating the environment and the materials the children had available to play with. But that is its own story.
I have never seen any real conflict between Piaget and brain science. In fact, it looks to me like brain science actually validates Piaget’s theories by giving them a neurological basis. What makes possible the transformations from one stage to another? Neurological development is the mechanism, perhaps? Perhaps the immature brain is incapable of kinds of thought that come naturally later. Perhaps this is why transformations can’t be pushed earlier with any success. The brain is not ready to do them. What about previous learning? Important too, but in a different way. Piaget said that transformations can’t be accelerated, but they can be delayed. Moving from concrete to formal operations, for example, does not happen automatically according to the calendar. Previous learning plays an important, a necessary role. The brain itself may now be capable of new operations, but the transformation will not occur if there is nothing in the child’s environment to operate upon. Does this explain why the children of disadvantaged families, with fewer resources in the home, tend to struggle more in school and to lag behind unless given lots more attention? As the Sweet Prince said, “The readiness is all.”
Brain science. Piagetian structuralism. Hardware. Software. Unlike in a computer, the software and the data actually play a role in modifying the hardware itself. Perhaps someday someone will revisit Piaget and will research how the two actually inter react and come up with a “unified theory.”
When I was in college, I was not a good note-taker. My notes were by no means thorough, nor did I make good use of them, so I am probably not a credible authority on the matter. I am still not much of a taker of lecture notes. But I think I have learned a thing or two about reading notes; I do not do them like I used to, nor do I teach them like I used to.
I would once have thought of “reading notes” as the notes that we used to take on index cards to write research papers. I dutifully followed this method, although it never really worked very well for me. It somehow always seemed clumsy, artificial, and more trouble than it was worth. I soldiered on with it because it was the required method, and we were graded on how well we seemed to be using it, and besides, I couldn’t have suggested a better way. I cut corners where I could, and the sky didn’t fall.
Likewise, I taught the same method, with mixed results. It all sounds perfectly, inescapably logical, but I always felt that most students went through the motions because I checked their notes, and it was part of the project grade. This served one purpose for me: it gave me some idea of the provenance of the material. But did the kids actually use them to good effect? I had little confidence.
The change began in the summer of 1990. I was accepted into a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar Machiavelli’s The Prince. We spent our mornings in the classroom, chewing over that book, page by page and paragraph by paragraph. We had to write a paper. We were supposed to be doing parallel reading on Machiavelli’s period in general and commentary on The Prince in particular. We were supposed to write up what we had read and make copies for all around the table.
Once I decided on a topic for my essay, my reading naturally became more selective and focused. It soon occurred to me that I was not “taking notes,” but actually pre-writing parts of my paper. Naturally, I saved everything to disk. When something from my colleagues’ reading notes and presentation notes seemed relevant, I wrote that up too. When the time came to actually write the paper (the night before it was due, naturally) it went together quickly. Big chunks were pre-written and merely needed to be woven in. It was a revelation.
I wish that I could include those notes now, but I seem to have parted company with the disk. I even translated them from CPM WordStar to Windows Word, but I can’t find those disks either. Ah, well.
The important thing is that it changed the way I taught research writing. Students make one of two major strategic errors in their “note taking.” Some laboriously copy out whole passages, word for word. Not only is this a great waste of time, it is dangerous. How? When the time comes to write the paper, there is the same problem as when working straight from the source: when you have the source right in front of you, it is almost impossible to avoid some degree of plagiarism, Those words go from the page, through your eyeballs and out your fingers, unprocessed. The language of the source comes creeping into your language, unbidden. These are not proper notes. Likewise, a print-out with parts highlighted is not notes; it is merely a source with portions highlighted. The danger is the same. At the other extreme are the “notes” so abbreviated and cryptic that the note-taker himself can make neither head nor tail of them later. But if you read a “headful,” be it a paragraph, a page, or a few pages, turn the book over or close the window, and write it up without looking at it. It will be fresh in your mind, but you would be hard put to reproduce the exact language. Then, check for accuracy. Furthermore, if you write it up at the time, you will find that you actually have a lot of your paper pre-written. The computer makes your notes infinitely organizable, which, after all, is the rationale behind note cards. Just copy from one document to the other, or if you are low tech, use scissors and paste.
I tell my students this story and assure them that it is easier. Trust me! I’m basically lazy. (I must stop using present tense.) In later years, I was much more flexible about the format of their notes. It didn’t have to be cards. But they had to convince me that what they had was notes, and that they were usable.
I taught Heart of Darkness for many years. I never tire of that little novel. I would re-read it, every word, ever year. As I read, things would stand out, things would click, things would connect with things in other passages. As I noticed such motifs, I would make a note on a Post-It and insert it. I would list the pages for all the cross-references I could find. After a few years, my desk copy was so full of yellow notes that it was virtually unusable. At this point, I decided to type up everything I had found. It ended up running several pages; I called it the “Compendious Concordance of Key Quotations from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” I have not made much direct instructional use of it in class, but I found it beneficial as a valuable aid to close reading.
A year or few ago, I did a similar thing with Haruki Murakami’s Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It is a favorite contemporary novel, and I have read it several times. My decision to read it yet once more, this time keeping reading notes was because I was going to lead a book-club discussion. This time, when I typed it up, I grouped the quotations by motif instead of just cross-referencing them. I don’t think they were of much use in reading the discussion, but again, they were a great aid to my close reading of this intricately wrought novel.
Over the past year, I have read some interesting books on education that are relevant to the onslaught of Reformism. The problem is that although I refer to them in posts, I have been poor at passing along much information about their actual contents, at least in any detail. Once I have finished the book, I can only write a conventional review, and I have not been able to work up much interest in doing so.
This brings us to the present point. I am now reading Pasi Stahlberg’s Finnish Lessons. I find this book of particular interest because the Reformists are fond of pointing out how badly American schools suffer in comparison to Finnish schools. This insignificant little nation of lumberjacks and reindeer herders (or such is the popular perception if not the reality) consistently whups our sorry asses on standardized tests. But what do Finnish schools do that makes them so superior?
In The Flat World and Education, Linda Darling-Hammond makes some interesting suggestions that do not square with the picture the Reformists paint, but she does not go into much detail. Stahlberg gives us meaningful detail greatly at odds with the “Reforms” being foisted on public education today. I am several chapters in, but I think I would like to back up to the beginning and share the “good parts,” the choice tidbits, as I go – reading notes, as it were.
The 12/23/2011 Idaho Statesman reports that as a result of legislation passed in the 2010 session, Idaho will discontinue funding the stipend ($2000/year for 5 years) that is paid to teachers who receive National Board Certification, having completed all of the program’s requirements. The stipend is supposed to defray, and perhaps then some, the not inconsiderable costs of completing the program. The certification is good for ten years, so a teacher must, about eight years in, begin the certification process anew.
Certification has complex set of requirements based on five propositions:
It would seem that there is little here not to like. Do we want to improve our schools by improving the quality of instruction? It sounds like National Board Certification addresses that desire. “Students taught by educators who get certified by the National Board tend to make bigger gains on standardized tests than students taught by other teachers, according a 2008 report from the National Research Council.” What is supposed to replace it? “Public schools chief Tom Luna included new incentives for teachers in changes signed into law this year. They include a pay-for-performance plan to reward educators who go above and beyond” Meeting the same need? Perhaps, but I am doubtful.
Colleagues who have achieved their National Board Certification have uniformly said that doing so was more work and more difficult than their Master’s degrees.
Earlier this year, the Idaho State Department of Education announced the demise of the Idaho Direct Writing Assessment, a test instrument that had students write an actual essay on an assigned topic. The essays were then read, twice each, by a team of trained evaluators. In its thirty plus years, the IDWA appeared to me to transform the teaching of writing and the quality of student writing across the state. But according to State Superintendent, the ISAT, a multiple-choice, bubble-sheet tests with its error-based proofreading and questions about writing, is a superior instrument. Again, perhaps.
But it appears to me that Idaho has taken two bold steps in the wrong direction.
http://www.nbpts.org/become_a_candidate/what_is_national_board_c
I recently made my annual round-trip to Rochester, Minnesota. When we were still teaching, we always flew – well, most of the way, once we learned that the 100 mile hop from the Twin Cities to Rochester by air cost as much as the flight from Boise to the Twin Cities; after that we took a shuttle for that last leg of the trip. Since we retired, we have time to take the train. You see, when you teach, you hate to miss any more school than necessary. Even the best substitute will not do things exactly as you would; the longer you are gone, the more cleaning up there is to do. Since retirement, it is no longer necessary to do the trip quickly. So, we fly to Seattle because Amtrak doesn’t go through Boise any more. From SeaTac, we take the light rail ($.75 each) to the King Street Station, and from there we are on our way. Amtrak from Seattle to Winona, shuttle to Rochester. The return trip is just the reverse. Because we are 36+ hours on the train – one full day plus two nights, brutal by coach – we have a sleeper compartment.
What has this to do with any of my pet topics, literary or educational? Only this: even allowing for sleeping and taking meals in the dining car, 36 hours is a lot of time for concerted reading. It is enough time, for example, to read a large nineteenth Century novel.
One year, I read Bleak House, or, I should say, I finished it. For years, I had loved the first half. It always seemed that I would get interrupted part way through, would set BH aside, and by the time I picked it up, months or even years later, I would have to start again. But 72 hours without much else to do is a goodly chunk of reading time.
Another year, I read Jude the Obscure, which always before had kicked me out after only a few chapters.
And this year, I reread Moby Dick. Nearly 50 years ago, I made a summer project of that book and read it by fits and starts, a few chapters at a time. This time, I read it nearly straight through, and it was a very different book. Of course, I imagine that I was a rather different reader this time. I had forgotten, or had never noticed what a strangely put together book it is. It works back and forth among straight narrative, sections on whales and whaling lore, Ahab’s orations, and throughout Ishmael’s philosophical musings. Insofar as the diverse elements cohere, the adhesive is the wry narrative voice, somewhat like the narrative voice in Heart of Darkness, but not so sardonic and biting. No wonder it was poorly received in its own time. It was, even in its day, old-fashioned, in its prose echoing now, the Romantics, then Shakespeare, and yet again the King James Bible and then the Greek tragedians.
Yet, it is curiously modern. It is sort of like Steinbeck’s intercut chapters in Grapes of Wrath — the close-up story of one family played off against more panoramic descriptions from a nation in crisis – except more so. It is a vast and complex montage that struck me as anticipating the montage-like structure of Eliot’s “The Waste-Land.” A couple of weeks later, I am still wondering “What was that?” I think that next time, I will not stay along so long.
Next trip, War and Peace, perhaps.
As a footnote to Lee Fang’s article in The Nation, an article in The Idaho Statesman, December 6, 2011, focuses specifically on K12, one of the major players in the virtual education industry. K12 is of particular interest in Idaho because it operates the Idaho Virtual Academy, one of the main purveyors of on-line instruction in Idaho, and new legislation and State Board policy dictate that henceforth, a minimum of two courses must be done on-line as a state-wide graduation requirement. This article is adapted from an earlier article in The Washington Post.
Because The Statesman often pulls its links after a few days, I am taking the liberty of pasting the whole thing below:
K12 Inc. of Herndon, Va., has become the country’s largest provider of full-time public virtual schools, upending the traditional American notion that learning occurs in a schoolhouse where students share the experience. In K12’s virtual schools, learning is largely solitary, with lessons delivered online to a child who progresses at his or her own pace.
Conceived as a way to teach a small segment of the home-schooled and others who need flexible schooling, virtual education has evolved into an alternative to traditional public schools for an increasingly wide range of students — high achievers, strugglers, dropouts, teenage parents and victims of bullying among them.
“For many kids, the local school doesn’t work,” said Ronald Packard, chief executive and founder of K12. “And now, technology allows us to give that child a choice. It’s about educational liberty.”
Packard and other education entrepreneurs say they are harnessing technology to deliver quality education to any child.
It’s an appealing proposition and one that has attracted support in state legislatures. But in one of the most hard-fought quarters of public policy, a rising chorus of critics argues that full-time virtual learning doesn’t effectively educate children.
“Kindergarten kids learning in front of a monitor — that’s just wrong,” said Maryelen Calderwood, an elected school committee member in Greenfield, Mass., who unsuccessfully tried to stop K12 from contracting with her community to create New England’s first virtual public school last year. “It’s absolutely astounding how people can accept this so easily.”
People on both sides agree that the structure providing public education is not designed to handle virtual schools. How, for example, do you pay for a school in cyberspace when education funding formulas are rooted in the geography of property taxes? How do you oversee the quality of a virtual education?
“We’ve got a 19th-century edifice trying to house a 21st-century system,” said Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, who served on K12’s board of directors until 2007.
Despite questions, full-time virtual schools are proliferating.
In the past two years, more than a dozen states have passed laws and removed obstacles to encourage virtual schools. And providers of virtual education have been making their case in statehouses around the country.
K12 has hired lobbyists from Boise to Boston and backed political candidates who support school choice in general and virtual education in particular. From 2004 to 2010, K12 gave about $500,000 in direct contributions to state politicians across the country, with three-quarters going to Republicans, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
“We understand the politics of education pretty well,” Packard told investors recently.
K12’s push into New England illustrates its skill. In 2009, the company began exploring the potential for opening a virtual school in Massachusetts in partnership with the rural Greenfield school district.
But Massachusetts education officials halted the plan, saying Greenfield had no legal authority to create a statewide school. So Greenfield and K12 turned to legislators, with the company spending about $200,000 on lobbyists.
State Rep. Martha Walz, a Boston Democrat, wrote legislation that allowed Greenfield to open the Massachusetts Virtual Academy in 2010. She acknowledged that the language was imperfect and didn’t address issues of funding or oversight but said she couldn’t wait to craft a comprehensive plan.
“You do what you need to do sometimes to get the ball rolling,” said Walz, who accepted at least $2,600 in campaign contributions from K12, its executives or its lobbyists since 2008, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
That scenario is repeating nationwide as K12 and its allies seek to expand virtual education.
GROWING FAST
About 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time public virtual schools in 30 states, according to Susan Patrick of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade association. Although that’s just a fraction of the country’s 50 million schoolchildren, the numbers are growing fast, Patrick said.
K12 teaches about two out of every five students in full-time online schools. Its next largest competitor is Baltimore-based Connections Education. The rest of the industry consists of smaller operators and some nonprofit virtual schools.
If it were a school district, K12 would rank among the 30 largest of the nation’s 1,500 districts. The company, which began in two states a decade ago, now teaches about 95,000 students in virtual schools in 29 states and Washington, D.C.
And it plans to grow. “We are now that much closer to our manifest destiny of making a K12 Inc. education available to every child,” Packard said.
In the past fiscal year, K12 had revenue of $522 million — a 36 percent increase from the prior year, according to securities filings. Its net income after a series of acquisitions was $12.8 million. Packard, 48, earned $2.6 million in total compensation.
HOW IT WORKS
K12 sells a variety of ways to learn online, ranging from hybrid schools — in which students meet in a classroom but take courses via computer — to a la carte courses purchased by traditional schools.
But K12’s core business — and the one proving most controversial — is full-time virtual public schools.
Virtual class sizes tend to be larger than at traditional schools — the Virginia Virtual Academy, public institution run by K12, averages 60 students per teacher. So in the primary grades, the model relies on the intensive work of a parent “learning coach,” who provides most lessons away from the computer, using books and 90 pounds of other educational materials shipped to families by K12.
In the higher grades, the bulk of learning is online, with software that sometimes aims to mimic real-life experiences for students, such as a high school biology lab featuring an animated frog dissection.
Teachers monitor student progress, grade work and answer questions by email or phone. They work from home, aren’t likely to be unionized and earn as much as 35 percent less than their counterparts in regular schools, according to interviews with former K12 teachers.
COSTS VS. BENEFITS
While virtual schools continue to expand, their effectiveness is unclear.
“We have no real evidence one way or another,” said Tom Loveless, a Brookings Institution scholar who served as a paid consultant to K12 in its early years.
A 2009 analysis by the U.S. Education Department found that there wasn’t enough research to draw conclusions about how elementary and secondary students fare in full-time virtual schools compared with classrooms.
On measures widely used to judge all public schools, such as state test scores and graduation rates, virtual schools — often run as charter schools — tend to perform worse than their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Last year, about one-third of K12-managed schools met the achievement goals required under the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to Gary Miron, a Western Michigan University professor who called that performance “poor.”
K12 officials say the weak test results are related to the program often attracting students who struggled in regular schools.
One of K12’s oldest and biggest schools is the Agora Cyber Charter, a statewide virtual school that began in Pennsylvania in 2005. The company manages the school under a contract with its nonprofit board of trustees. Enrollment this fall topped 8,000 students.
Agora has never met federally defined goals.
Company officials said internal data show that Agora students — and K12 students in general — are learning at a faster rate than the national norm, even if they can’t pass a grade-level test. And the longer students stay with K12, the better they perform, the company said.
But even some supporters of virtual schools question whether online operators are charging taxpayers fairly.
“They have no business trying to charge as much as the brick-and-mortar schools, at least over time,” said Finn, of the Fordham Institute, which has commissioned a study of the cost of online schools. “Once you’ve got the stuff that you’re going to use for fourth-grade math, for instance, you don’t really need to do much with it. And it should be cheaper.”
Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/12/06/1905899/leader-in-the-virtual-schoolmovement.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz1foVzLt00
Lee Fang, writing in The Nation, outlines “how online learning companies bought America’s schools.” Closer to home, Dan Popkey’s December 6 Statesman article, “K12’s money hasn’t influenced Idaho schools chief Luna, spokeswoman says,” explores in more detail K12, one of the major players in the virtual education industry. K12 is of particular interest because it operates Idaho Virtual Academy. http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/12/06/1905899/leader-in-the-virtual-schoolmovement.html#storylink=misearch
Luna says he has not been influenced by K12 money “None of these donations have influenced his position on education policy,” his spokesperson says. She further points out that he has not been influenced by campaign contributions, nor is he an investor. Nevertheless, Luna and K12 executives and major investors seem to be on very close personal terms. “I don’t want to be boastful, but they know me, I know them,” Luna says. Draw your own conclusions.
Because The Idaho Statesman often pulls links after a few days, I am pasting the entire article below:
Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna has close ties to K12 Inc., which contributed about $44,000 to his 2010 re-election bid.
But Luna’s spokeswoman, Melissa McGrath, said Monday that his push for reforms that may boost business for K12 have not been influenced by campaign contributions or a financial relationship with any education company.
“Superintendent Luna has no current investments in K12 Inc. or other education-related companies, and he never has,” McGrath said.
She added: “Superintendent Luna has run for statewide office three times in which many individuals and organizations donated to his campaigns. None of these donations have influenced his position on education policy. Superintendent Luna has been a proponent of expanding parental choice in public education since he served as a local school board member in Nampa in the 1990s.”
Luna received his first education industry contribution from former K12 chairman William Bennett in 2002 and calls K12 CEO Ron Packard a friend. Luna said he convinced Packard to sponsor Gov. Butch Otter’s Governor’s Cup Scholarship tournament.
“I know Ron well,” Luna told the Statesman in February. “He comes to the Governor’s Cup and we play golf. Sometimes he comes to Idaho and maybe we’ll go to dinner.”
K12 operates the Idaho Virtual Academy, which enrolled about 3,000 students and received $12.8 million from the state in fiscal 2010. Of the $44,000 K12, its employees and major stockholders spent, $25,000 was funneled to an Idaho interest group for independent advertising on Luna’s behalf. K12 Inc. gave Otter $5,000 in 2010.
Idaho Virtual Academy is one of 43 public charter schools in Idaho. McGrath said Luna has “not done anything” to increase IVA funding. The school met federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards in the 2010-11 school year — as did 407 of the 659 Idaho schools that received AYP ratings.
IVA received $4,523 per pupil in state general funds in the 2009-10 school year, the last available. That compares to $8,186 in Boise, $5,684 in Meridian, $5,147 in Kuna, $5,560 in Nampa and $5,397 in Caldwell.
Luna also knows K12 investor Michael Milken and his brother, Lowell. The Milkens own Learning Group LLC, the largest shareholder of K12, with 24 percent of the company. The brothers advocate pay-for-performance for teachers, one of three prongs of Luna’s 2011 reforms he calls “Students Come First,” which passed with support from Otter.
“I don’t want to be boastful, but they know me, I know them,” Luna said in February. “I like to get their data and discuss it with them.”
Another key supporter of Luna’s reforms is the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, which placed ads backing Students Come First. Foundation CEO Thomas Wilford was on the board of K12 Inc. for eight years, before stepping down a year ago.
K12’s Idaho lobbyist is Suzanne Budge, a longtime champion of school choice.
If it seems that School Reform has become the darling of Big Business and Big Business-friendly Politicians, there are reasons for that, and they have nothing to do with what kids learn, and a great deal to do with money. This article from The Nation was referred to me, and I refer it to you. It lends credence (and then some) to what I have come to suspect. I couldn’t have said it better (or nearly as well) myself. Read it and be afraid – very afraid.
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/164651/how-online-learning-companies-bought-americas-schools
